Familypedia talk:Info pages
Instructions When you tell people to "add the following text :" you should tell them where to start and where to stop. I wrote an example somewhere, with "below" just after the opening "pre" and "above" just before the closing one, and said something like: :...everything that's below "below" and above "above"... Robin Patterson 13:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC) Absolutely correct Robin. Please jump right in and change it. It is a wiki after all, and I am certainly not territorial about any of this except the core templates while they are still in development. My attention to help so far has been minimal. Partly because I was changing how things worked. Folks could really help out by filling out the sketches I have done so far elaborating on what they understand of it. EG- an introduction to a novice user about what an info page is, and why they might want to use it. "It costs a little more up front to use them... etc." It is definately much easier to just dump output of a genealogy program into a candy cane color article of their own design. Anyway, I did put some preload boxes up there, so I am not totally ignoring support. Children are not functional yet, so first things first. [[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 15:59, 10 October 2007 (UTC) bugs *references should handle all cite templates *add famous relatives *there should automatic templates for each section. These adds sections eg "name variations" when a value for alternate names gets filled out. Otherwise such sections are not displayed. Praise This is an impressive development, moving to solve a number of problems we have had, such as the duplication of information that Bill has mentioned many times. Robin Patterson 04:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC) :Thanks Robin. I believe that you and I share the belief that this wikia will have 10s of millions of person articles in the forseeable future- after all (roglo has 2 million, so it's not much of a stretch). Once we start seeing huge traffic and the corresponding Advert dollars, we can see this info page data getting moved into a dedicated back end database so that we can do stuff like notify users of possible duplicates as they enter the data. That's the sweet spot for dealing with duplicate resoultion- at the very moment the interested party is present and engaged, who has a strong motive to resolve the ambiguity. [[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 07:57, 7 November 2007 (UTC) Space after "="? Current instructions are to enter data to the right of the "=" sign. I did that, and one of AMK's "minor fixes" was to insert a lot of spaces after the "=" signs. If they were really "fixes" as stated (as distinct from someone's "tidiness"), the instructions should be more accurate (preferably not only here but also in a comment near the top of the form). Robin Patterson 23:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC) :The values after the "=" are named template parameters, so leading and trailing spaces are stripped (see wikipedia:Help:Template#Parameters). So the spaces after the "=" are purely for readablility and/or style. Thurstan 03:34, 6 July 2009 (UTC) Space right at the end of a line See Talk:Samuel F Hester (?-c1861)/info for a problem that may arise if there is a space after the typed or pasted parameter. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:58, 6 July 2009 (UTC) :see my response there: there was a non-blank "non-spacing" character. Thurstan 03:49, 6 July 2009 (UTC) Counties, etc You can get a page categorised like this: Categories: Forlong (surname) | Born in 1959 | Died in 2003 | Died in England | Died in East Sussex County, England | Died in Hove, East Sussex County, England "Died in England" is correct but is not a good category for what could be hundreds of millions of individuals except those millions for whom nothing more particular is known. I guess it does no harm if the programming is thereby easier, but if all the info page people go into that category we should say something on that category (and many others that will become crowded) to the effect that users are not encouraged to add individuals' pages manually but cannot remove them if they are there because of listing in info pages. Is there a chance of using parser functions to omit each bigger place category if there is a smaller one? "Died in Hove, East Sussex County, England" is very unlikely to be an actual category in the general scheme of things, for two reasons: #Most of our "died in" categories, being based on our page names for the places, currently have no more than two locations mentioned, e.g. "Died in Yakima, Washington" (not the country), or "Died in Norwich, England" (not the county). As we move to categories for smaller places, there will be a growing percentage of triple-bangers, but mostly for ambiguous names. Hove is just "Hove" on Wikipedia; we are likely to add the country, but not the county as well. #Although East Sussex is technically a county, it is not called "East Sussex County". Other authority areas that are likely to be inserted in the "county" line of the form are not even counties (e.g. boroughs in Alaska, parishes in Louisiana, and some of the unitary authorities in the United Kingdom such as Greater London, which is bigger than the old London County) or are counties but being in Ireland have the word "County" first. The template should not be tacking "County" onto the end of whatever is written in the form. Point number 1 above suggests that there should be some rethinking of how the templates convert places into categories. I'm very pleased that they do, but they need to do it with more accuracy. Point number 2 suggests to me that people should be asked to show the full name of the area (e.g. East Sussex, Greater London, County Antrim, Yakima County) just as its page name appears, and that the template should not add "County". Maybe that is part of the answer to point number 1. Robin Patterson 00:03, 20 September 2008 (UTC) AMK152's response :I agree. Currently we see in the info pages: |Birth town = |Birth county = |Birth state = I agree that it should be changed, but I rather see everything consistant. Such as including the country name. I see a lot of articles/categories that both includes/discludes the country name. I would reccommend this use so that it categorizes by country too, which would change our format to: |Birth town = |Birth county = |Birth state = |Birth country = Also I agree to removign the "County" part from the category template so that countries that normally don't use the format (Such as East Sussex County). Also, ancestors from other countries, such as the Netherlands, use "province" instead of "state." Then Winterswijk is a "municipality" and not "county" of the province of Gelderland, Netherlands. And not every smaller subdivision is a "town." So perhaps a better format is this: |Birth country subdiv3 = |Birth country subdiv2 = |Birth country subdiv1 = |Birth country = That way it can apply to all places generally. If the place actually uses "County" or something like that in it's place, it will be put there like such: |Birth country subdiv3 = Ellery |Birth country subdiv2 = Chautauqua County |Birth country subdiv1 = New York |Birth country = United States Which gets us down to the township. And perhaps a more detailed division: |Birth country subdiv4 = Byrnsdale |Birth country subdiv3 = Jay |Birth country subdiv2 = Elk County |Birth country subdiv1 = Pennsylvania |Birth country = United States Which subcategorizes at the township level. Of course, townships may infact have so little of a population, that dividing them up may be unnessesary. I also agree to the part about discluding categorizing people if they are already categoized in a subcategory. (example: Categorizing someone in "Born in Elk County," instead of all three: county, state, country because the category it self is categorized within the state) -AMK152(talk • ) 02:37, 20 September 2008 (UTC) Robin's encouragement Looks like the way to go. I like the "Birth country subdiv3 =" idea. However: *There are at present some "place" lines too. Quoting from the current form on the project page: |Birth place = |Birth town = |Birth county = |Birth state = |Baptism = |Death month = |Death day = |Death year = |Death estimate = |Death place = |Death town = |Death county = |Death state = :I expect they cause duplication or variations if someone fills them in too. Will you get rid of them, or could they be a useful alternative for matching our place categories? - See next point. *No matter which way you code it, some results will not match our place categories. With the utmost care, you will still get results such as "London, England, United Kingdom", which I think nobody really wants as a page name. Some people will exercise less than perfect care and get results that are simply wrong. Such nonconforming results may become quite numerous. We can't yet predict exactly which ones will develop. Some will arise from changes in local authority boundaries. Hove is in East Sussex now, but it was just in Sussex for 800 years. West Virginia was just "Virginia" for many decades. That's where the "place" lines can come in. Keep them at the head of their group and give them instructions (which they don't have now) - ask users to insert the full place name as it appears on its wiki page; tell users to fill in the next lines only if the place is not in the wiki. Then AMK152 will be able to devise categories to show which info pages use non-standard place names, and the Wikia maintenance brigade will be able to ensure that the place gets its own page in the wiki and correct that info page accordingly. Robin Patterson 12:50, 28 September 2008 (UTC) AMK152's response :1. When you say place lines, I assume you are referring to "|Birth place =" and etc. Currently, the place line is for what is displayed. Using this line to categorize is a good idea: |Birth place = Jay, Elk County, Pennsylvania, United States produces: Category:Born in Jay, Elk County, Pennsylvania, United States Which would be much easier, but raises a problem. Currenty, we have the state, county, town thing is what gets categorized. For example: |Birth place = Jay, Elk County, Pennsylvania, United States |Birth town = Jay |Birth county = Elk |Birth state = Pennsylvania This format categorizes the places, but the display is in the "place" line. the is so that the township/county are on a seperate line from the state/country. If the break was not there, the place name would make the infobox take up half the article. That is why I like to seperate the lines. This is why I chose the format: |Birth country subdiv3 = Jay |Birth country subdiv2 = Elk County |Birth country subdiv1 = Pennsylvania |Birth country = United States Because we can place a between the 1st and 2nd subdivision. :2. Your point of people naming stuff differently, thus creating different categories. Perhaps: |Birth country subdiv3 = Jay Township |Birth country subdiv2 = Elk County |Birth country subdiv1 = Pennsylvania |Birth country = United States Which is likely to happen. However, we can put in the info page instructions how to use these fields. :3. For page names, they would have to be exact for consistancy. (Such as Elk County, Pennsylvania, United States instead of just Elk County, Pennsylvania). Which isn't that big of a deal until you bring up the interesting point of changing location. Although I am not familiar with Hove, East Sussex, I do know of other borders that changed. Such as the formation of counties in New York. Someone may have been born in what is now Chautauqua County in 1807, when it was Genesee County. In 1808, Chautauqua County did not actually exist, so how could one be born in it? Someone born in Pennsylvania in 1753 was not actually born in the United States. Someone born on Manhattan Island in 1633 was born in New Amsterdam, not New York. Someone who was born in Massachusetts in 1633 was not born in the USA. We will have this issue with both of the proposed method and the current method. Either way this is an issue. -AMK152(talk • ) 23:29, 28 September 2008 (UTC) I read that 28 September response very soon after it appeared and have reread it a couple of times since. It raises almost as many questions as it answers. The nature of the template/form makes such responses rather large and not easy to deal with in one go. So I'm creating another page to list those "lines" individually or in groups for easier discussion: Genealogy:info pages/list of parameters. Robin Patterson 13:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC) bug- encoding Note- some older pages have "Nationality". The current page has "Citizen of". That's probably less problematic, since for many expats, it is common to consider national identity as different from where they are a citizen. Maybe need a bot run to move nationality to citizen of. -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 22:14, 23 February 2009 (UTC) Interest from WeRelate; could cut both ways Our huge rivals have been admiring some of our features. http://www.werelate.org/wiki/WeRelate_talk:Watercooler#Info_pages_on_Familypedia_.5B1_June_2009.5D I thought of suggesting they make their enquiries here; but that might keep them ahead of us for too long! Maybe our gurus can get an idea (for our current secret "alpha" project) from "what already happens at WeRelate: when you edit a Family page and add a child, the child's page is automatically updated with a link to the Family page". But I fear that our system doesn't work that way - "reciprocity"? Or maybe it does if you specify it, as with adding CM generations etc. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:08, 27 June 2009 (UTC) :Dallan's scheme is so been there done that. He is painted into a corner. Sad really. -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 03:41, 27 June 2009 (UTC)